Caught You
by lazarov
Summary: Three times Eliot could have said something, but didn't. And one time he didn't need to say anything at all. (CW: self harm, canon depression)
1. Chapter 1

1.

There are little scars all over Quentin's hands and wrists and arms.

Some of them look almost like the smattering of razor nicks Eliot has on his own jaw, down his throat. The kind of tiny, pearlescent healed wounds that he figures are an inevitable mark of manhood. But Quentin has them across his knuckles, too, along the line of his thumb and at the base of his wrist. Nondescript little scars that could just as easily be from carelessly bumping against sharp corners or accidentally nicking himself with one of those shitty potions class-issued obsidian knives. Nothing to worry about, not really.

Not compared to the neat lines that poke out from underneath his sweaters whenever he rucks them up.

Tonight, Quentin's sleeves are pushed all the way up to his elbows. He's too wrapped up in a particularly difficult procession of choreographed hand movements to remember to be sheepish about the scars they all pretend they don't see.

Eliot watches him as he mouths his way through each step, a reasonably simple space-clearing spell: _Markov's 3rd, index fingers mirrored through Vladislav's Arc modified by the Summoner's Position in middle and ring fingers, carried through to Bonevere's Hatch with left supra right._ All movements must be done cleanly and without hesitation, which seems to be the part really fucking up Q's groove tonight.

He likes these evenings, sitting by the fireplace and sipping at red wine and pretending not to pay close attention as Quentin practices his homework: his long fingers dancing in the firelight and the mood only broken by the occasional "fucking _shit_ " when Quentin buggers a movement and the spell fizzles on his fingertips. The little straight-line slashes on the outside of his left forearm are visible, too, in this light: not clearly enough that Eliot can guess at their age or severity, but enough to make his heart tighten into a ball in his chest.

Glancing away from his arms, Eliot looks up just in time to see the tiny wrinkle of Quentin's nose as he tries to ignore the stray strand of hair tickling at it. Huffing a frustrated breath, he barrels his way determinedly through the steps of the spell for the umpteenth time with furrowed eyebrows and his tongue stuck out the corner of his mouth.

"Jesus Christ," Quentin mutters. He's slumped petulantly in his armchair, his elbows planted on the armrests and his hands moving, rhythmically. Q's sleeves creep further up and his arms are illuminated by the flickering light and Eliot realizes, now, the way some of the lines are fresh-red and not old-white.

Eliot leans forward in his chair, his jaw working to shape words he hasn't even decided on yet, but then Quentin fucks up Bonevere's Hatch again and, even with his eyes trained on the cuts on Q's forearms instead of the movement of his hands, Eliot can tell the spell's not working because there isn't enough overlap between his little fingers as he moves through the crosshatch. It's a rookie mistake.

"Your pinkies are all wrong," Eliot says before he can stop himself, breaking the silence, and Quentin glances up at him with a start, his eyes uncrossing themselves from their myopic focus. He slides his sleeves down, reflexively, and Eliot hesitates, wanting desperately to say something because this, _this is the moment to fucking say something_ but he's not sure what to say. He's never been good at this, this _worrying about other people and expressing it out loud_ thing.

So he clears his throat and knocks back the last of his wine, before setting the glass on the floor and rolling up his own sleeves.

"I'll show you," he says with a sigh, sliding into Markov's 3rd and wishing he wasn't such a fucking coward.


	2. Chapter 2

Eliot isn't good with pity.

So, he decides, that's not what he feels when he walks into the room to find Quentin pressing his right thumbnail into the base of his left thumb, little red marks making a notched chickadee-track line across the edge of his hand.

He does feel a lot of other things all at once: a strange, longing panic; a familiar, nervous tingle in his fingertips; half-forgotten memories of frostbitten fields and creaky floorboards and a ragged diary hidden under his mattress; a desire to walk backwards out of the room and pretend he never saw anything at all.

Quentin doesn't see him standing there; his hair has fallen forward, shielding his eyes and forming blinders that limit his view to the huge, dusty book splayed out in front of him. He mouths wordlessly along with whatever he's reading, stumbling on a few words - from the looks of it, the text he's trying to parse out is in Latin or Greek, one of those languages that were built to trip up the tongue. His hands are on top of the desk, in front of him, and his right nail works its way into the meat of his left thumb. Every time he stumbles, the thumbnail digs in harder and Eliot can see him wince, almost imperceptibly, a quick tug at the corner of his mouth before he keeps going.

"Uh," Eliot says, his voice wavering more than he'd like to admit. Suddenly noticing his presence, Quentin flinches. He pushes his hair behind his ears and crosses his arms, stuffing his hands deep under his armpits and offering Eliot an awkward smile. "Hey."

They stare at each other for a millisecond (and Eliot thinks that maybe Quentin's gaze is a challenge, while he knows for certain his own is just pure deer-in-headlights terror), before avoiding each other's gaze, their matched expressions glazed and jittery.

"What's up?" Quentin says finally, pushing away his book and closing it. A little plume of dust poofs out. "Thought you and Margo were out tearing up the town."

"Nah," Eliot shrugs. "She fell asleep trying to choose a pair of shoes." Quentin snorts a laugh and he feels compelled to add, "I'm really not kidding." He pauses, bouncing on his toes. "So, uh - whatcha doing, friend?"

"Just, y'know," Quentin waves a hand (his right hand, Eliot notes, not his marked-up left hand, which stays partially-hidden) over the books on the table in front of him, "trying to study."

Eliot takes a few steps closer, so he can lean over the desk and take a better look: _Caravel's Metamorphosis_ , _The Ethics of Transmutation_. Blech.

"Transmogrification," he groans. "Have they already given you that test, the one where you have to transfigure a mouse and then they _guilt trip_ you about it, afterwards, for not 'fully considering the ramifications involved with transfiguring a living being'?" He pitches up his voice and adds air quotes to the last bit, for good measure.

"Uh, no," Quentin says, eyebrows knit together. "Not yet?"

"Oh. Well. Spoiler alert, I guess."

His hands are still shoved under his arms, but Eliot can still see the flush of red spreading out across Quentin's left hand. There's one dime-sized spot, right at the base of his hand, where his thumb meets his wrist, where the skin is raised and angry and white-hot. Eliot's mouth goes dry, looking at it, and he has to drag his eyes away because he's been staring too long and too obviously and some words have to come out of his mouth, now, or else they'll be forced to talk about it. About _that_.

"I was just gonna," he starts, looking up from Quentin's hands to his eyes and seeing the resignation there, which isn't really the expression he was expecting and it throws him off. He stumbles as he continues, "I was gonna go have a cigarette. If you wanted to come. You could probably use one?" He gestures vaguely at the textbooks.

Quentin frowns at him. Like he's being let off the hook too easily and he knows it.

"Yeah," he says finally, his eyebrows knitting together before his expression softens and he relaxes his posture, hidden hand finally sliding out from under his arm. "That'd be good, thanks."

He follows Eliot to the patio, into the dewy late-evening air and the hazy yellow light of the Edison lights strung overhead, and the click of the door closing behind them feels like punctuation: a full-stop, after which they can both pretend the moment before never really happened at all.


	3. Chapter 3

Quentin doesn't get out of bed for three days, except to go to the bathroom and to slip into the kitchen for water and crackers. That's what Eliot assumes, anyway, from the abandoned saltine wrappers left on the island and the dwindling supply of clean glasses. Other than that, his door stays closed and his light stays off.

Eliot can't help but try to listen at the door whenever he passes by, his ear pressed against the wood, scanning for any sign of life. He'd knocked, two days into Quentin's self-imposed isolation, just to make sure Quentin hadn't, y'know, fallen out of bed and cracked his head on his bedside table and bled out on the floor without any of them realizing - at least, that's what Eliot told himself, because it distracted him from other, worse thoughts. (Thoughts that make his stomach roll and his fingers shake.)

When he knocked, he heard a groan on the other side of the door, the sound of blankets rustling and a barely discernible, "Yeah?" It was all he needed: just a sign of life. "Nothin', buddy, just checking in," he mumbled, and retreated.

So when Quentin suddenly appears in the kitchen without ever seeming to enter the kitchen at all, like he's accidentally slipped through spacetime, and clears his throat behind him, Eliot nearly fumbles his drink.

"Fuck," he murmurs, licking a drop of bourbon from his palm. "Hey, sunshine."

Eliot says it carefully, like he's asking 'you okay?' without really asking it, a questioning uptick at the end. He says it like he's trying not to spook a skittish dog, which is exactly what Quentin looks like right now: shifting foot to foot, eyes avoiding his, fidgety hands shoved into hoodie pockets. His hair is tangled and dirty and his eyes look bruised underneath and the whole effect makes him look slept-in, like a walking wrinkled bedsheet.

Really: he looks like _shit_.

"Hey," Quentin says, hoarsely. He winces at the sound of his own voice and shades his eyes from the harsh light streaming into the kitchen - that sharp, hot, early-evening light - with his hoodie sleeves pulled over his hands.

* * *

There are enough things that he knows about Quentin, at this point, that he knows this is more than a one-off bad stretch: the depression (that Quentin pretends is cured), the cuts (that they all avert their eyes from), the pills that he's supposed to be taking but doesn't, now, because he's convinced that whatever was wrong with his head was fixed the moment he got accepted to Brakebills.

He can't even blame Quentin for it, because Brakebills sells itself as a fix, holding a welcoming hand out to lifelong-outsiders and making dangerous, attractive promises: "There's a well of power inside of you. Use those fucked-up feelings clawing around inside your brain to become a better magician, because the strongest magic comes from pain."

It's fucking bullshit, is what it is.

Pain is one thing. Illness is another.

The excitement of magic can't fix a fucking chemical imbalance quite the way a Wellbutrin scrip can, and the whole 'suffering for your art' narrative shared by magicians, painters, writers (all artists, Eliot thinks, in their own way) is nonsense. It's a happy story made up by miserable people who want to tell themselves their misery is what makes them special. If your misery is useful to you, it's not such a hard pill to swallow.

But this numbness eating at him (because won't take his _fucking_ _pills_ ) doesn't make Quentin a better a magician, and magic doesn't fix anything, not really.

Eliot should know.

* * *

"Glad to see you out and about."

Quentin keeps fidgeting with the cuffs of his hoodie, keeping them pulled over his knuckles with just the tips of his fingers poking out. He could be hiding something but, really, Eliot half-suspects there's nothing to see under there; cutting yourself is a fix when you're actively drowning and trying to fight your way back up just so you can get one more lungful of air. It's not particularly useful when you're sitting at the bottom of the ocean, the entire weight of the sea making sure you don't move an inch.

(It's why Eliot knows he needs to keep knocking on Quentin's door. Just in case.)

"Can I get you something?" Eliot says after a moment, before glancing down apologetically at the drink in his hand and sliding it aside. "I mean, like. Food? I could make food?" They both know he _can't_ make food, can barely pour milk into cereal without it catching fire. But he means it.

"You don't have to," Quentin says, quietly. He doesn't look him in the eyes - his gaze seems locked somewhere around Eliot's sternum. He's slouched against the edge of the counter, hunched over like he's trying to shrink himself so small he'll pop back out of existence, back through the rip in spacetime he'd originally fallen through.

"I know I don't." Eliot yanks open the fridge. "How about an omelette? And toast?"

"Just toast, thanks," Quentin says.

"I think we're in the mood for a little hot food, too," Eliot says breezily, pulling out the eggs. "Are you a milk-in-your-eggs person or no? I've always thought a dash of sour cream makes the best eggs, but Margo thinks it's disgusting." He pauses, pawing one hand through the vegetable crisper. "I'll take your silence as acquiescence on the sour cream front."

"It's fine, I don't really want..." Quentin starts, but Eliot gives him a look. He chews on the inside of his cheek and shrugs. "Sour cream is fine."

Eliot winks at him. "I knew you were a man of good taste." He piles sour cream and chives and pico de gallo in his arms and knocks the fridge door closed with his hip. He doesn't know what the fuck he's supposed to say, now, as he starts the gas range and begins cracking and whisking - all the words running through his head are some combination of pleading and scared and frustrated, and they all carry some probability of making things worse.

But, at the very least, he knows getting some warm eggs and carefully-buttered toast into Quentin can't hurt.


	4. Chapter 4

"Jesus Christ, Q."

When Eliot finally gets the door open, he finds Quentin on the floor, sat against the wall with his forearm elevated, his elbow resting on his pulled-up knees and his hand and arm blocking his face from Eliot's view. There's a razorblade lying near his feet and, standing in the doorway with his head tilted to the side, Eliot can see the blood soaking Quentin's shirt at the elbow.

The sight makes his heart lodge itself in his throat: can't breathe, can't speak, can only uselessly stand in place and listen to the sound of his own breathing, deafening as a siren. But then Quentin lets out a choked sob and Eliot has to consciously unstick his feet from the ground and start to move towards him, barely remembering to shut the door as he does.

Crossing the bathroom in three quick strides, he kicks aside the razor and drops onto his knees, reaching for Quentin's arm.

"Don't," Quentin says weakly, warningly, but Eliot shoots him a look and takes his hand anyway, straightening his elbow out to get a better look at the damage.

There's too much blood to see much of anything - it bubbles out of the cut like an overflowing cauldron, boiling over and making a mess - and the sleeve of Quentin's henley is blooming with blood, bright red around the edges turning copper-brown as it spreads through the waffle-knit.

(Eliot thinks, distantly, that it looks like syrup oozing through the little divots of an Eggo, the kind his mom used to give him before school when he was little. He'd always take the time, tongue poking out the corner of his mouth, to butter every last square and make sure the syrup was perfectly portioned out. Not one pocket left dry.)

He shakes his head and forces himself to focus.

There are droplets of blood on the tile floor and there's blood under Eliot's nails and on his trousers where he's accidentally kneeled in the spill-over. There's so much blood, so much blood, and he knows he should know what to do but he wishes someone else could just take over because this is too much responsibility, right here in his hands (literally: Quentin's arm, hot under his fingertips and sticky on his palms, his blood trickling along Eliot's fate line to soak into the cuff of his favourite button-down).

"Fuck, Q," he mutters, trying to keep his voice low. "Put pressure on that for a second." He stands up to spin around and snatch the cleanest-looking towel from the rack, folding it in two. He moves to place it over the cut but Quentin pulls it out of his hands with a pleading look, embarrassed, and presses it to the cut himself.

"I didn't mean to," Quentin says after a second, avoiding his eyes.

Eliot sits, cross-legged, against the wall beside him and tilts forward to try and read his face. Resting his chin on his hand, he tells him quietly, honestly: "It doesn't matter."

"Doesn't it?" Quentin laughs, darkly, and sniffs. "It was an accident. I wasn't trying to off myself or anything like that." He lets go of the towel to wipe at his nose and Eliot gently nudges his shoulder with his own.

"Okay. Give me that," Eliot murmurs, gesturing, and Quentin briefly hesitates before shifting position: his hand rests lightly on Eliot's thigh as his arm drapes across his lap, allowing Eliot to wrap his hands around his forearm and apply more pressure to the towel.

"You're going to get blood on your…"

"Already did. Some more won't hurt."

"Oh," Quentin mutters. He presses the heel of his free hand into his forehead, grinding it into the spot between his eyes. "I'm so stupid." Eliot readjusts his grip to press his palm flat over the spot where blood is starting to pinprick through the white towel. He starts to laugh, something hard-to-read crossing his face as he looks upwards, eyes glued to the ceiling to avoid Eliot's gaze. "So fucking stupid."

Chewing on his bottom lip, Eliot lifts the edge of the towel to get a better look at the cut.

With some of the blood dabbed away, he can see now that there are actually three cuts, all in a row, a couple of inches down from the bend of Quentin's elbow. Two of them are shallower; thin lines brimming with a slash of bright red blood. The other is deep enough that it looks like a gaping mouth, smiling up at him. A dribble of blood starts to seep from the edge and he quickly presses the towel back down to stem it.

Quentin doesn't react, doesn't even wince in pain. He just sits, motionless, eyes staring blankly ahead as Eliot looks him over with red-rimmed eyes. He's not laughing, anymore, but his breathing is hitched: the same hiccoughy sort of sound you make after you laugh so hard your ribs hurt or after you finally stop sobbing. Same difference.

"I'm a mess," Quentin says, quietly, breaking the silence.

"Maybe a little bit." Eliot slides one hand down Quentin's arm and absently rubs his thumb across the veins in Quentin's wrist; his tendons, pulled tight as violin strings, slowly relax as he loosens the anxious fist he'd been making.

"I thought that after all this turned out to be real, that I wouldn't…" Quentin sighs and thumps his head backwards against the wall, frustrated. "I shouldn't still be doing this. I shouldn't _want_ to..." He trails off.

"Why?" Eliot says. "Because of _magic_?" He spits the word out like a bad taste in his mouth, then sighs. "The fact that magic didn't fix all your problems doesn't make you ungrateful. And you're not stupid."

Quentin quirks the corner of his mouth, a doubtful sort of 'maybe,' and Eliot's heart jumps.

His hands have finally stopped shaking enough that he can let go of Quentin's arm ("You take over," he murmurs) and start to form a spell. There are probably better ones, but his brain feels scrambled and it's the only one he can bring forth from the back of his brain right now with reasonable certainty.

His hands work methodically but cautiously as he moves through the procession: slow, methodical arcs and deliberate patterns. He nearly stumbles on the third movement, a transition from _bhramara_ to Flamel's Interlock, but manages to keep going, the energy building in his hands like glowing coals. Quentin watches him with tired, hooded eyes, tracking the movements with quiet interest; it's not a spell he'd've learned yet, second-year Fundamentals of Wellness spellcasting stuff, and something twists in his stomach as he realizes Quentin is committing it to memory.

Finishing the last movement, a small line drawn through the air paralleling the cuts, he hears Quentin gasp softly.

"They're not healed," he warns, as Quentin reaches over to peel back the towel.

The edges of the cuts have pulled themselves together, as though connected by invisible butterfly bandages, and the pressure of the squeezed-together skin makes the blood pooled in the cuts seep out, running in beads down his arm. All that's left is clean red lines, thin as papercuts.

"Wow," Quentin says, softly, arm lifted to his face so he can examine the result close-up. "Neat." His voice is dark - sarcastic, almost, fully aware of the fucked-up circumstances. Eliot wants to elbow him in the ribs.

"Just because you know about that spell, now," he begins, faltering. "It doesn't mean - doesn't mean you can just _use it_ whenever you…"

"I know," Quentin says, nodding. "I won't." He drags his fingertips across the straight red lines, pulling his thumb across the deepest one and examining the smudge of blood left behind.

"They'll take just as long to heal as they normally would, and you still have to take care of them. Bandages and Polysporin."

Quentin's shoulder is still pressed against his own and he wishes they could stay like this indefinitely - Quentin's weight and heat against his skin, right there where he can keep a fucking eye on him.

"Can do."

Quentin carefully pulls the sleeve of his shirt down, sticky-wet with blood and already turning a bit crusty, and Eliot says, weakly, "Q, you have to bandage those."

"I will. Later."

His lower back is starting to ache, his tailbone screaming against the tile floor, but Eliot doesn't move a muscle as Quentin slides down to lean his head against Eliot's shoulder. He's grateful for it: it's easier to say the honest thing when you don't have to look someone in the eye while you say it.

(A memory comes flooding back to him: fourteen, driving in the truck with his mom. Her eyes on the road and her hands on the wheel and the urge rising like bile in his throat to come out to her. A sudden rush of bravery before he swallowed it back down and let the moment slip through his finger.)

"I think you…" Eliot hesitates. Quentin doesn't move, doesn't breathe, as he finds the right words. Maybe not the _best_ words, but the words he needs to say: "You need to get some help, Q." His voice wavers and he watches as Quentin's head rises and falls with his breaths - he counts them out ( _one_ -exhale- _two_ -exhale- _three-_ exhale) before he says, stronger this time, "We'll get you help, okay? Get you back on track?"

"Yeah," Quentin says finally, his thumb worrying at his cuts through the sleeve of his shirt. Eliot resists darting his hand out to stop him and, instead, reaches out to wrap one hand around Quentin's wrist, his thumb finding his pulse and resting there.

"We'll get you help," Eliot repeats, leaning his cheek against the top of Quentin's head and breathing him in.

Underneath the tips of his fingernails, Quentin's blood has dried to a rusty brown.


End file.
